


I Solemnly Swear

by remus1960sirius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Autobiography, Canon Compliant, First War with Voldemort, M/M, MWPP Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remus1960sirius/pseuds/remus1960sirius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin's autobiography left in a letter to his son Teddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I try to be as canon-compliant as possible, because, well, J.K.'s word is law in my opinion... Please enjoy :)

#  **Prologue**

 

Teddy Lupin had just finished his last year of Hogwarts, and was preparing to make a home for himself. He had lived with his grandmother ever since he could remember, but now he had found that it was time to move out, and find an apartment of his own. He didn’t have much of an inheritance, as none of his parents had been rich, but thanks to financial help from his godfather, Harry, he had coin enough to pay the first rent of a flat, and he was hoping to find a job that could pay for the next ones to come.

When he was about to close the last box, his grandmother surprised him, as she told him to wait, because she had one more thing for him. He was surprised simply because he was absolutely sure he had remembered everything, he had just checked his remembrall, which was still white. But when he looked, he saw why he hadn’t actually forgotten it: he had never seen the thing before in his life.

It was a leather bound book, one that didn’t look too old, but that had a look of something that hadn’t been touched for years. He was very mystified by this fact, as he was so sure he had seen every book in the house, but had never set eyes upon this one in his life. As he looked up, and met the eyes of his grandma, Andromeda explained that the book was a gift from his father, one that had been left in her possession when he died, with the wish that it would be passed on, when Teddy was grown enough to understand the content.

As she continued, she explained to Teddy that she had had a hard time accessing when exactly that was, as the book had been spelled so that no one but Teddy could read it. She had figured then that she would give it to him for his 17th birthday, but had forgotten about it, so she saw this time as the perfect time for it. That way, she argued, he would have something to do in his new apartment, when he sat there all alone, with no one to talk to.

The gift meant a lot to Teddy, as he treasured every object he had gotten from his parents, especially if they had been actual gifts for him. So he accepted it happily and put it in the top of the last box, promising himself that it would be the first thing, he unpacked when he had moved. A week later, when he was in his new apartment in an attic on top of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, with only his bed in place, everything else still packed in boxes.

That’s when he opened his book for the first time, and found that a letter had been placed between the leather binding and the first page. He took this as a sign that the letter should be opened first, which he did with trembling hands, not knowing what to anticipate. What the letter read he would never have guessed. It said:

 

* * *

 

 

> _Dear Teddy_
> 
> _If you read this, it means that I never got a chance to talk to you, that I never got to see you grow up. It means that I fell in the battle I’m about to leave for now, but I hope that my sacrifice might have been a help for those on my side, so that not all hope of a better world is lost._
> 
> _I leave you this book as a small and insufficient compensation for all the talks I had hoped to have with you. I would have loved nothing more than to see you grow up to be the great man I know you’ll turn out to be. I hope you have found love, and that you haven’t been afraid to embrace it, no matter what. I want to be there to guide you through it, but if I’m not, I hope you’ll find others to support you._
> 
> _This book was written in the time just after I found out that your mother was expecting you. It was very dark times already back then, so I knew that there was going to be a chance that I might not be there for you, for some reason or the other, but I wanted you to know who I was, and what I went through, so I wrote this book, into which I put every detail of my life that I thought you should know, and which no one else could tell you, because no one else knew about._
> 
> _It is, in short, the story of my life, mostly about my childhood and the loves I’ve had and lost in my life. It is my hope that you will read it for what it is: my way of conveying to you the things I want you to know about me, good and bad, and that you will not stop reading because you find things about me, that you didn’t expect._
> 
> _I know that you’ll be shocked by some things, but I beg you to understand that I just need you to know the truth, the whole truth, even if it can be uncomfortable for you. My last words to you are that I truly did love your mother, even if some things in the following might suggest otherwise. I would never have led a woman on, and definitely not to the point of marriage, without loving her. With these words being my last, I leave to go into a battle, from which I’m not sure I shall return._
> 
> _Yours forever_
> 
> _Dad_

 

* * *

 

 

Teddy finished the letter, and found that he had tears coming down his cheek. He rarely cried, but the letter he had just read had restored a hope, which he had long since given up on. He had grown up with stories of his mother, who had told almost everything to her mother, who was then able to tell it on to Teddy. His father on the other hand had been very reserved about his secrets, which meant that no one had been able to tell Teddy more than what was commonly known, which wasn’t a lot. It was Harry that had known the most about him, and even he had only known him as a teacher, and so wasn’t likely to have been told many secrets.

Teddy had never in his wildest dreams imagined that his father would have foreseen his own death and taken precautions so that his son would have a chance of getting to know him. He felt very touched that his father had gone to so great length for him to read this, but he also remembered that the book was spelled so that no one but he could read what it said.

That thought made him curious, because wouldn’t it have been the people, whom he had actually known in life, that should have been able to read it? And why had he put so much emphasis on the fact that he had loved Teddy’s mother? That was the one fact that everyone had always been able to tell Teddy, that his parents had really loved each other.

After giving it a bit of thought he decided that he would unpack before he started reading the book, because he wanted to give it full attention, when he read it, which wouldn’t be possible as long as he had no other furniture than his bed. It was with a heavy heart, though, that he set to unpacking his things, and with plenty of glances towards the bed, where the book still lay as an open invitation.


	2. The Time of Secrecy

 

#  **The Time of Secrecy**

It took Teddy three days to feel comfortable enough in his new apartment to look at the book again. It was not that he wasn’t curious about what it said; he just wanted to give his father’s memory the credit of not having to put it down all the time because of small, unimportant interruptions. He intended to read all of it at once, as he felt he owed that much to his father. Also he couldn’t wait to find out what it was that his father had wanted to tell him. He had, after all, gone to great lengths to make sure that he, and only he, read it.

So he sat down on the hottest day of the summer with an ice cream he had bought downstairs and a charm to keep him cool while he read. He carefully opened the leather binding and started reading his father’s autobiography:

 

* * *

 

 

My early childhood was the most peaceful time I can remember. My parents were happy together and they loved me like all parents should love their child. My mother pampered me and my father gave me everything I pointed at. He was a ministry official and worked a lot, but never so much that he was missing in my upbringing. But, like all good things, it had to come to an end. Unfortunately, it happened far too early for me.

I was only five years old when my father unknowingly set off Fenrir Greyback’s notorious temper. He came to our house on the next full moon, and, as always, my window was wide open to let in fresh, cool air in the hot summer’s stuffiness. For him, the jump to the first floor was no problem – not on that night of the month. Never in my life had I experienced the amount of pain that he inflicted upon me that night. Of course that is nothing compared to what I have endured every month since.

I know now that I wasn’t the first victim to be bitten for the purpose of Greyback’s revenge, but at the time it made me feel very alone. That feeling was only increased when my father left us shortly after my attack. Apparently he couldn’t deal with having a werewolf for a son. Or perhaps he just blamed himself for causing this to happen to me, and couldn’t stand seeing me in pain from it. He was found dead two months later. No one was able to figure out if he had killed himself or if he had been killed, but the curse had definitely been cast by his own wand, and therefore it was seen as a suicide.

The transformations I went through in the time to come were the worst ever, because in my human form I was tiny and fragile, but the wolf I turned into was fully grown and vicious. My mother locked me in a tiny room, completely shielded within the house, every full moon, which was excruciatingly painful, but very necessary. My wolf form was not at all pleased with being trapped like that, and I was forever begging my mother to let me out. Of course she couldn’t give in, because I might hurt someone. I might hurt her.

She was never able to send me to school, for fear of people thinking my frequent absences and the bruises and cuts I had afterwards were signs of some sort of abuse. So, somehow, she managed to keep a night time job while home teaching me in the day. Only my letters and other non magical stuff of course, as she was preparing me for a life in the Muggle world, away from suspicious wizards who might figure out what I was and shun me for it. None of us ever dreamed that I would go to Hogwarts, but then, we hadn’t taken Dumbledore into account.

So, on my 11th birthday I received the most unexpected letter of my life, written by Dumbledore in person: my special acceptance to the most famous school of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the world. Of course there were conditions. I had to be kept away from the other students at full moons; Dumbledore had already made the necessary arrangements. Words can’t even begin to describe the way I feel about Dumbledore for what he did for me. He made me believe that I was more than an animal, that I was worth something.

My first ride on the Hogwarts Express was like my first step back into society. As I was absurdly untrained in any kind of social interaction – other than what I’d had with my mother – I was quite pleased with just hiding behind a book for the duration of the train ride. I managed to find an empty compartment, and had just sat down, when I realized that my plan wouldn’t work, as two other boys came in, asking if they could join me. I didn’t look up from my book, but simply nodded – I was too afraid to look at them in case they recognized me for what I was.

At first they left me be, they didn’t seem to know each other from before, so they were busy telling each other about all the pranks they had ever performed in their lives. I found it quite relaxing to just sit there, pretending to read, while overhearing this casual conversation. Their names, I found out, were James and Sirius. Their conversation was ended however, when a young red haired girl came in, clearly upset. She didn’t say anything; she just sat down by the window and started crying softly. I didn’t know what to do; my first reaction was to comfort her, but when the other boys ignored her, I did too.

Before long the girl was followed by a black-haired greasy-looking boy, who didn’t give a great first impression, I must say. He was openly bragging that he was sure to be in Slytherin, which almost led to a fight between him and the two boys, except that he left before they got that far, taking the girl with him. This opened the new topic of school houses for James and Sirius, but as it didn’t take them a long time to exchange ideas about where they would probably be, they then turned to me. I don’t know if they really hadn’t noticed me before then, or if they just hadn’t found something to ask me before; but after that I couldn’t hide anymore.

Admitting to them that I hadn’t expected to get accepted to Hogwarts wasn’t something I wanted to do, so I simply told them that I hadn’t really considered it. They then pushed me into telling them about my personality so they could try to figure out where I would go. Of course they ended up settling on Ravenclaw, I think they had already decided that after seeing me with the book for such a long time. Coming from them I felt quite flattered that they thought me clever, as I already then had a good idea about their own intellects.

It wasn’t until a bit later that I realized that they actually respected me, for who I was. The way I found out would probably seem like a small gesture to others, but to me it meant a world of difference. We were getting close to school and had to change into our school robes. None of them seemed to have a problem with stripping down in front of each other, but I was more reluctant. My entire body was even back then covered with scars, which I preferred kept secret. When I made to leave for the toilet to change, however, they offered to step outside instead. It was the first time since my attack six years previously that people had been kind to me in any such way.

 When I had finished changing the train was already coming to a standstill, so we got ready to leave the train and go up to the school. I shared a boat with James, Sirius and a very frightened looking girl, who had apparently shared a compartment on the train with her older sister and seemed terrified to be separated from her before even arriving at Hogwarts. That wasn’t enough to take away the awe we all felt about seeing the castle for the first time, though, because, as you probably know, it’s an amazing feeling.

Now the Sorting was something I’d dreaded too. What if the Sorting Hat didn’t agree with Dumbledore on admitting a werewolf and refused to sort me? I honestly didn’t care what house I went to, as long as I got into some house. But at least in this matter I wasn’t the only frightened one. Almost everyone seemed to be afraid of being sorted into a house that their parents or others might not approve of, even the greasy boy from the train seemed less sure about being in Slytherin now than he had been a few hours ago.

Surprisingly, the person who seemed to be the most nervous of all was Sirius, whom I had thought to be unaffected by little things like this. It wasn’t till he was sorted that I figured out why though. But when the hat shouted Gryffindor, and all of the Slytherins sat in silence, looking stunned, I remembered Sirius saying on the train that all of his family had been in Slytherin, but that he might break the tradition. It seems that he really did, and that in itself was enough to prove that he really was brave enough to belong in Gryffindor.

As the little red-haired girl, who had been crying in our compartment, Lily, was sorted into Gryffindor as well, I couldn’t help to be a bit relieved for her. The greasy-haired boy was obviously annoyed by it, but I was glad that she wasn’t in Slytherin – I simply couldn’t have imagined her there. After her, the frightened girl from the boat, Mary, joined her older sister in Ravenclaw, and then I lost track of things, as I started dreading my own sorting.

It took me a while to react, when professor McGonagall called out “Lupin, Remus,” but then I was stumbling up the stairs and putting on the hat. I was too distracted by fear of being sent home so I didn’t notice its actual wording, but I remember that it told me I was brave for venturing into the wizarding world, and that I would be wise to keep up my bravery. Then it shouted out Gryffindor, and I could go sit next to Sirius and Lily, while trying not to look too confused, as I had never in my life felt less brave than I did at that time.

I was able to relax a bit more during the rest of the Sorting, in which James became a Gryffindor like his dad, and the greasy boy, “Snape, Severus”, became a Slytherin like he had expected. We were also joined at the Gryffindor table by a mousy-haired, plump boy, introducing himself as Peter, and who seemed to be utterly surprised to not be in Hufflepuff, and quite scared to be sitting so close to James and Sirius, whom he seemed to sense were well out of his league.

When the giant feast was over, and Dumbledore had warned the students to stay away from the newly planted Whomping Willow, the four of us went to our dormitory together, where none of us really wanted to go straight to bed, but at the same time had trouble staying awake much longer. We agreed to talk the next day, and went straight to bed, the others undressing in the dormitory, while I slipped into the bathroom and did the same. I wasn’t in the mood for explaining my reasons not to show my naked body to anyone at the moment. Luckily they didn’t comment on it when I got back, as they had all fallen asleep.


	3. Making Friends

#  **Making Friends**

 

I woke early on the first day of classes. At least, early enough that I was already showered and dressed when Peter woke up. James and Sirius had the air of two people who could keep sleeping forever, but Peter and I decided that it would be wisest to wake them, so they wouldn’t miss any classes on their very first day. While Peter went to wake up James, I tried to shake Sirius awake. I was unsuccessful, however. Apparently a bit of shaking wasn’t enough, so I left it to the very groggy James to jump into his bed and start hitting him. That worked.

In the end, I went down to breakfast alone, as James and Sirius still needed to dress and so on, and Peter wanted to wait for them, but I preferred having more time for breakfast. When I got down there, only one other first year was there: the red-haired girl from the train yesterday. Lily, I reminded myself. When I sat down, she smiled at me and immediately started talking to me, as if we’d know each other always. I quickly found out that she was Muggle-born and as so was as nervous about the classes as I was.

I sat with her all through breakfast, even when the other boys joined me in the Great Hall and Lily obviously wasn’t interested in talking to any of them. James kept staring at her, but Sirius just shrugged and started stuffing his face with ten different kinds of cereal all at once. Peter followed Sirius in doing so without hesitation. Lily was great to talk to, even if she got a bit freaked out by James’ continuous staring at her back.

When our timetables were handed out, Lily and I went through them together, and I was a bit surprised at first when Lily seemed happy about all the classes we had with the Slytherins, until I remembered that the boy she had been with yesterday had been sorted into Slytherin. She was thrilled when she saw that our very first class, Potions, was with the Slytherins, so that they could go to class together. Since we had had such a nice talk she invited me to come, and I accepted, seeing it as a chance to get another friend.

When we got to the Potions dungeon (without getting lost, thanks to Lily’s friend, Severus, who had passed it on his way to the Great Hall that morning) we were met by a massive man called Professor Slughorn, who asked us to make groups of three for the day’s lesson. So the three of us sat down together as a group. Although the other three Gryffindor boys sent me weird looks, when they arrived, they seemed to accept it when they heard we were forming groups of three.

The reason we needed groups of three was because we needed one person to continually stir the potion. Severus volunteered for that. One person had to cut the ingredients, I did that, and one person needed to supervise, read the instructions and tell us when we needed to do what. Lily was at first a bit unsure about being left with such a responsibility, but at the same time she seemed determined to prove her worth to all the kids around us, who had grown up in the wizarding world, and who thought themselves superior.

It quickly proved a good choice of Lily for supervisor, as she didn’t give one single wrong instruction, resulting in a very close to perfect potion, something Professor Slughorn clearly hadn’t anticipated. He was so thrilled with our result that he gave us each ten points for our houses, and added to the ten points Severus had already earned from answering two questions correctly earlier that lesson, we all left the dungeon proud of having secured each of our houses 20 points in our very first lesson.

While Lily and I went up to the 3rd floor for our Charms lesson, Severus went with the other Slytherins to the greenhouses for Herbology. We got lost on the way however, and arrived a bit late resulting in the fact that there were only two seats left, and they weren’t next to each other. So I went to sit at the rear of the class with other three Gryffindor boys, and Lily went to the front, to sit next to some girls, whom I didn’t know.

Charms was so different than Potions that I was surprised to find that both were taught at the same school. Where Potions had been mostly about silent concentration (except for the odd accident), Charms seemed to be all about noisy chaos, where everyone was waving their wands around wildly hoping for something right to happen, but mostly just causing things to fly across the room or explode. James and Sirius seemed to excel at making chaos and so they felt right at home. Peter tried not to show it, but it was quite obvious that he was scared shitless from all the things flying around the room that could possibly hit him on the head.

I wasn’t sad to see the end of that lesson either, as I felt quite a lot safer, when we left the room and went to the great hall for lunch. I sat with the other boys at lunch, and they all seemed a very nice lot, which confirmed what I had thought on the train. However, they did have a hate for Slytherins, especially Sirius, who seemed to hate his entire family, and as such they were interested in what could have made me work with a Slytherin in Potions of my own free will.

They didn’t seem to be entirely convinced when I said that he had seemed like an OK kind of guy, and that I just wanted to make friends, not enemies. After a while though, they let it go, and went on to other topics, like what kind of pranks they could pull without getting caught in the act. I left them to plan the details, and kept it to myself that I thought it very unlikely that they could manage to get into the Slytherin dorms without being seen, and even more dubious that they would be able to drop Dung Bombs in their common room fireplace, so that they would go off when the fire was lit.

Already in our first week of classes, a routine started to exist. When we Gryffindors had classes with the Slytherins I would sit with Lily and Severus, and otherwise I would sit with the gang of Gryffindor boys. At first the boys were sceptical about leaving me to sit with a girl and a Slytherin, but in time they accepted that it was my own wish. All in all, I was very happy about my new friends, all five of them, but there was a catch that I thought about too late: Having to lie to them every month.


	4. The Secret Exposed

#  **The Secret Exposed**

 

I’d known from the moment I was accepted that I would have to lie to my classmates about where I went during the full moon, but when I had considered it then, it had always seemed so simple. I mean, who would ever even notice that I left for a few days? But now that I actually had friends, it suddenly seemed like a very difficult task. From home I had come up with a story about a sick aunt, whom I could go visit every month, but I was beginning to doubt that it would work. Why did my friends have to be so clever?

Anyway, I had no choice but to try it, and two weeks into the semester I received an owl from home saying that I should come home for a few days, because my aunt was mortally ill, and might not make it that much longer. None of them seemed suspicious about this, so my fear of being found out was calmed a bit, even though I still dreaded my transformation, as I always did. And on top of my normal fear of becoming a ferocious wolf, this time I also feared that I might be able to get out, that I might actually attack some innocent citizen of Hogsmeade.

I hadn’t needed to worry, though, as it was Dumbledore himself who had cast the spells that protected the house from anyone getting in or out. The only way to get in there was through passageway under the Whomping Willow, and no one in their right mind would try to get through there, especially not at night when you couldn’t see its whacking branches before they hit you. So my first transformation passed uneventfully, yet far from pain free, as there were no enchantments to stop me from hurting myself.

Yet I was still far better off than I’d been before, as my mother was a Muggle, so she didn’t have any way of healing me afterwards. Now I was safe with Madam Pomfrey, who’s very skilled at healing, so I felt much better when I woke up than I’d ever done since my father left us. Of course there is no cure for werewolf bites and slash marks, but at least she could ease my pain by making me sleep longer, and generally nurse me back to health.

I got to enjoy the peace and quiet of the hospital wing for a day before I had to go back to school, see my friends, and come up with more lies about where I had been. I got back to the dormitory while they were still in class, but they got back soon after me. They were talking as they went through the door, but as soon as they spotted me, they became very quiet. Sirius approached me carefully, and for a split second I thought they had figured it out, and were afraid of me, but then he asked me how my aunt was doing, and I drew a big sigh of relief.

I had come up with a plan about what to tell them while I had been in the hospital wing that day. So I told them that my aunt was more stable now, but that I might have to go home to see her again if she got worse. This way, it would be easier for me to excuse my absence next month. They all believed my lie so I was able to go back to normal life for another month. Throughout my first year, I used my aunt excuse a few times, till right after Christmas, when I decided that it was getting a bit risky, so I told them that she had died, and that I was going to her funeral.

After that I came up with less related reasons – mostly I just happened to fall ill on the day of the full moon, which would save me the trouble of explaining if they caught me going to the hospital wing. By then I was starting to realize that the mischief making friends I had gotten would do pretty much anything, including following their friends, and I didn’t want to risk anything. I should have known that it couldn’t stay a secret forever though, not when my friends were some of the brightest students in our year; even if they never seemed to study.

It was Sirius who figured it out, in the summer holiday between our first and second year, when he was at home with that horrible family of his. The threat of a dark lord rising was slowly getting out to the general public, and so of course it was the main subject of conversation in Sirius’ house that summer. And since the dark lord was apparently recruiting all kinds of dark creatures, werewolves were bound to come up at some point.

They did one night, during dinner, when the family had just finished listening to the Wizarding Wireless, which had reported that a family of wizards, in which both parents were Muggle-born, had just been brutally attacked by a werewolf. What was unusual about the episode was that the parents had been killed, but the children had been left to live. When the children had later been healed as much as the healers were able to, the kids had disappeared. No one knew where they had gone.

Even though werewolves were the topic of conversation all through dinner, Sirius didn’t put the thoughts of werewolves and my disappearances together right away; it wasn’t until he had been thinking about the terrible attack (which his parents had quite approved of) that he made the connection. He’s told me since then that he was absolutely terrified, when he first realized what it all meant.But because he was trapped at Grimmauld Place and not allowed to use his parents’ owl, he had plenty of time to think it over before he could tell anyone, which proved crucial. 

When I next saw him on platform 9 ¾ on the 1st of September, he didn’t show any signs that he had found out. All three of the Gryffindor boys were beaming to see me when I stepped onto the platform, and Lily was waving at me from a short way away, where she was standing with Severus. I waved back, and went to find a compartment with the boys, not expecting anything to be changed from the way things had been between us two months ago, when we had all gone home for the summer.

We spent most of the journey swapping stories about our summers, all being jealous at James, and feeling sorry for Sirius. As neither my nor Peter’s holiday had seen much action, we skipped quickly past them so that we could spend more time cursing Sirius’ family for making him suffer like they had, all because he had been placed in Gryffindor, and “besmirched the family honour”. After we had finished that, we all agreed to be jealous at James, as his holidays had seemingly been perfect.

Sirius kept quiet about his new knowledge so well I had absolutely no idea that he had figured it out. And I didn’t find out until the morning after my next transformation. When I left that night, with an extremely bad excuse, Sirius had decided to tell the others what he knew. He had by then concluded that he didn’t mind the fact that one of his friends turned into a bloodthirsty monster once a month (I never really understood this fact, but hey, I’m not complaining), but he felt a bit uneasy about telling the others, as he didn’t know how they would react.

After I had left the dormitory he asked the others if they didn’t find my excuses for leaving all the time quite unrealistic. They agreed with him, and admitted that both of them had noticed it too (Peter probably hadn’t, but he didn’t want to admit it). He then moved on to asking them if they had noticed that the times of my absence seemed to be frequently spaced out, about once a month. This comment was enough to make James realize what was up, but, naturally, Peter needed to have it spelled out.

Exactly how they reacted, they never told me – I think they might have been a bit ashamed about not accepting it right away. All I know is that they had all accepted it when they came to see me in the hospital wing the next morning. Madam Pomfrey hadn’t let them in, of course, but James had his invisibility cloak, which enabled them to sneak in without her noticing anything. I suppose I should have memorized the conversation I had with them that morning, when I woke up, but all I remember is the feeling of complete relief that I still had my friends, even though they knew my biggest secret. That morning was the beginning of the rest of my life: My life with the Marauders.


	5. Seriously Bad Judgement

#  **Seriously Bad Judgement**

 

In the weeks following my friends’ discovery of my condition, the strongest emotion I felt was relief. Ever since we became friends, I had dreaded them finding out, because I anticipated that they would tell people about me, or in the very least stop being my friends. As it turned out, my fears were very far from the truth. James and Sirius actually found it kind of cool to be friends with a werewolf, even if no one was allowed to know.

And I must admit that it was a great relief not having to come up with a lie every month anymore. I still, obviously, had to come up with something to tell the others in my classes, and especially Lily and Severus, but it was much easier to make things up with the help of the other boys. Besides that, no one would actually notice my absence on weekends anymore, so at least in those months I didn’t have to come up with excuses. My relationship with the other Marauders also became much more relaxed in the time following their finding out, simply because there were no lies between us anymore.

Sirius was still a bit worried about my mental health, as I was still quite friendly with Lily and Severus, a girl and a Slytherin, whom in Sirius’ eyes were both dangerous company to keep. I enjoyed my time with them, though. They didn’t make me laugh like the Marauders did, but they were great to talk to, if you wanted a conversation on a more mature level, and they were very helpful with homework, something that could be said about none of the other Marauders, as James and Sirius never did their homework, and Peter wasn’t intelligent enough to be of much help.

We were still split in trios in Potions, but besides that I shared no groups with them in classes, so most people didn’t actually know that I was friends with them. Some people had seen us in the library in the evenings, but frighteningly few people actually used the library at a regular basis. It’s not that we were really afraid to be seen together, although perhaps Severus was a bit, because he as a Slytherin was expected to hang out only with other Slytherins, but we found it nice to keep our friendship a bit to ourselves, it just made things easier in many ways.

When the Marauders found out about my lycanthropy I considered for a while if I should tell Lily and Severus too, but I decided not to. The Marauders had accepted me, but I wasn’t sure if Lily, a muggleborn, who knew very little about werewolves, and Severus, a Slytherin, raised to be a dark wizard, would accept it as easily. I decided not to take the change, because I really didn’t want to lose that friendship, even if I still had the Marauders. I now wish I had told them sooner, because things could have gone very wrong because of their ignorance.

 Over the years that followed I should have realized how jealous the Marauders got of Severus and Lily for their friendship with me. They didn’t understand that it was just a different kind of friendship from the one I shared with them. But Sirius in particular seemed very offended that I could possibly get something from a Slytherin that I couldn’t get from him. At the time I didn’t understand the depths of his jealousy; it wasn’t until much later that I fully understood.

So, all in all, it was bound to go wrong at some point. It was my own fault, for not telling Severus and Lily about my condition, for telling the Marauders about my secret hideout, and for not being specific enough to Sirius that my relationship with Severus was mostly based on homework and magical discussions on a higher level. It happened on a full moon night in the spring of our fourth year at Hogwarts.

I had been with Lily and Severus, finishing our potions project, right before I went to the hospital wing to meet Madam Pomfrey. Sirius had seen us in the library, and had apparently taken offense by the fact that we were laughing together (not because someone had told a joke, but because we had been remembering the very pink colour of Peter’s potion gone wrong in the last potions class, as we were writing down the proper way of brewing it in our essay).

When I left, Lily got up too; she had plans with one of the other girls from her dormitory, which left Severus alone at the table in the library. I have no idea what went through Sirius’ head at the moment, but it can’t have been very much, as he then would have realised that he was being very stupid. But he went over to the table and asked Severus if he wanted to know a secret. Suspicious as he was of Sirius suddenly talking to him, Severus hesitated, but when he heard that the secret concerned me, he became more interested, and agreed.

Sirius then told him about the Whomping Willow covering a hidden entrance to a tunnel, and how to press the wooden stump to make the tree freeze. The only other thing he said was that Severus was to go through the tunnel that night, and that that would make him discover a dark secret about me, but he didn’t tell Severus what the secret involved, or that he would be putting himself in mortal danger in the process.

I, of course, didn’t learn about it until the next morning, when it could have been too late to save Severus. Luckily for him and for me, James had more sense than Sirius did. Sirius told him what he had done, what he had said to Severus, and James immediately realised what would happen if Severus got close enough to me for me to smell him, which would mean death for Severus and probably for me too, as I would then be seen as a dangerous beast.

He got to the Whomping Willow, just in time to see Severus entering the tunnel. If he had gotten there just five minutes later, I would probably already have killed Severus, but James managed to pull him out of there, just after Severus had gotten a glimpse of me at the other end of the tunnel. None of them were hurt by me, but in their hurry to escape, they forgot to hit the knob on the tree, which meant that they both got a good beating from the Whomping Willow.

Severus was the one who told me all of this on the next morning, when I woke up, and to my horror discovered him in the bed next to mine. The only part he didn’t tell was the part of Sirius telling James, but I figured that much out on my own, from his account of James’ “rescue”, which in Severus’ version sounded more like an act of bad conscience, because he was sure that James had been in on the plan the whole time. I knew both Sirius and James well enough to know that it could only have been Sirius’ bad judgement that could have gone so terribly wrong, and that James would have been level-headed enough to realise the seriousness of the situation.

That morning was the first time since I had told them about my lycanthropy that none of the Marauders came to visit me in the hospital wing. I think they were afraid that I wouldn’t want anything to do with them anymore, after what had happened, but they were quite wrong in that assumption. Not because I’m generally that forgiving, but because I had been anticipating a disaster to happen at some point, and that all in all, nothing too terrible had happened. Sure, it wasn’t really the way I had hoped that Severus would find out, but at least no one had been killed.

I’ve always blamed myself for what happened that night. True, it was Sirius who got the terribly bad idea to tell Severus to go face to face with a werewolf at full moon, but if I had only told Severus sooner, or if I had sensed the depths of Sirius’ jealousy sooner, none of it would have happened anyway. Sirius remained my best friend, however reckless and immature he was. We shared something special, something that I was slowly – very slowly – starting to realise the nature of.


	6. New Feelings

#  **New Feelings**

 

That summer during the holidays I felt much more alone than I previously had when away from Hogwarts. I found that I missed Sirius the most, even after what he had almost done to me. I think it was because the episode had made me realise that Sirius, in his own reckless and immature way, had shown me how he felt about me. Only really strong feelings could provoke an act of jealousy like that, even if Sirius didn’t know any other way of showing them, coming from a home without love of any kind, at least not directed at him.

So that summer, both my owl and Sirius’ went through serious stress from all the flights between our houses, because we literally wrote to each other every day. We both wished that we could be together, but that dream was completely impossible. Sirius wasn’t allowed to leave the house, and he forbade me to come and visit him. He was obviously afraid that his parents would realise what I was, and do something to me.

In those weeks that I spent alone I did a lot of thinking, mostly about feelings. I knew that Sirius had been completely deprived of feelings his entire life, which meant that he rarely showed what he felt, but after spending 4 years living in the same room as him, I was quite sure that this was a big thing for him. What I didn’t know was the nature of his feelings. At first I was puzzled by the intensity of the jealousy, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised what it all must mean. That just brought up other thoughts, mostly about my own feelings, which were quite a bit harder to figure out.

I stayed at James’ house with him and Peter for a week, but we all missed Sirius too much to have any real fun. He had always been the centre of fun, around which we all revolved, and pranking just wasn’t the same without him. James had also started missing someone else, which surprised both Peter and me, but mostly me, because he had started talking about Lily all the time. Ok, I won’t say he hadn’t noticed her before, but never in this way. He seemed unable to think of anything but her, which quite bothered me, because I knew her much better than he did, and knew that she was not his type, and even more that he definitely wasn’t her type.

When the holidays ended, and we went back to school as 5th years, we were all thrilled to see Sirius, even if he did look quite broken after spending so much time locked in his parents’ house all summer. We all hugged him, and I think only Sirius and I noticed that our hug was slightly longer than any of the others’ had been. Afterwards he gave me a look that said very clearly that he at least had noticed, which made me even surer about the theories I had come up with since I had last seen him.

That night in the dormitory, I pretended to be very sleepy, and wanting to go to bed early. Actually I was way too excited to sleep, but I just wanted the others to go to bed early and I succeeded. When James had stopped talking about Lily (meaning that he had fallen asleep) and Peter had started snoring I lay for a while listening for clues of whether Sirius was asleep or not. He didn’t snore, never had, so I couldn’t really tell. In the end I tiptoed over to his bed, and ever so slightly opened the curtain of his four poster bed.

There he was, wide awake, and not in the least startled to see me there by his bed side. He got out of bed without a sound, and together we went out of the dormitory, but not until Sirius had silently summoned James’ invisibility cloak. Under it, we sneaked out through the common room and down the hall until we found an empty classroom. All the way Sirius seemed to know exactly why we were going there, even though I hadn’t told him anything.

It wasn’t till we arrived in that classroom that I realised that I hadn’t actually thought about what I was going to say when I finally got this far. I had only worried about figuring it all out, so never actually got as far as thinking about putting my feelings into words that wouldn’t scare Sirius away. I opened my mouth and was about to stammer something when Sirius surprised me more than he ever had – which is saying quite a lot when talking about Sirius Black, the notorious mischief maker.

He kissed me right on the mouth, and not just temptingly. I had anticipated a lot of reactions when I had considered our after-summer-reunion, but this was one thing I never in my wildest dreams had imagined. It would have been a lie to say that the kiss wasn’t great. I mean the guy was experienced enough, having snogged half the school’s female population already; I was just a bit too surprised to kiss back at the time.

 When he pulled away, he put a finger on my lips to stop me from speaking, which was quite unnecessary as I was completely out of breath. His exact words are lost to my memory, and even if I remembered them, I could never do them justice in writing them down. All I truly remember about the conversation that changed my life are the waves of wonderful emotions that hit me, and that the words were punctuated by kisses after every sentence.

It was close to dawn when we thought to return to the dormitory, as the others would probably have freaked out if we were missing when they woke up. I don’t think any of us got much sleep though; I know I didn’t. And I know that Sirius sounded nothing like his usual sleepy self when James jumped into his bed as usual. Normally it would have been the only way to wake him, which is why James, ever since our very first year, had made the tradition of jumping on him every morning. He was quite surprised to find Sirius awake and ready for the attack that day, which made James end up hanging upside down by the ankles next to Sirius’ bed.

Sirius claimed that he just wanted revenge for being brutally woken up all those times, but I had a feeling that he might have felt weird having James jump on him so soon after having kissed me. I mean, he’d probably had enough close contact for then, and while there had never been a sexual aspect to the jumping, it wasn’t hard to imagine why Sirius didn’t want anyone to jump him at the time. Luckily Peter and James just thought it was a laugh, and didn’t see the reasons I did.

That day, being a Sunday, I would usually have spent with Lily and Severus in the library getting ahead of the homework for next week, but instead I made some kind of lame excuse to Lily, which she no doubt didn’t buy, but accepted anyway. That left me with time to talk some important matters through with Sirius, while James went to the library to look at Lily, and Peter was left on his own, which occurred more and more often in the year to come.

The important matter I discussed with Sirius was mostly about the friendship I still had with Severus, even if it was not as close as it had been before the incident. Sirius had a hard time accepting it, but I finally managed to convince him that it wasn’t going to change, and that if he wanted anything to happen between the two of us, he would have to stop cursing Severus every time he walked by. I couldn’t tell him to stop completely, as that would not only make Sirius miserable, something I couldn’t live with, but it would also cause unnecessary suspicion, because it would be a very notable change in Sirius’ behaviour.

As we didn’t want anyone to find out about us yet, mainly because we ourselves weren’t quite sure what was there to find out about, we settled on agreeing that Sirius would just not curse Severus as often as before, no more than once a week. We also agreed that any larger pranks on him should be cleared with me beforehand, and that if James got curious about this, we would say that it was due to my recently acquired title of prefect. All in all, I think we made a fair deal, and one that wasn’t strict enough that Sirius would think to break it, which was a big factor to consider.


	7. Animagi

#  **Animagi**

 

All in all, my fifth year at Hogwarts was probably the best. The amount of homework wasn’t enough to take away the joy I got from being with Sirius, even in secret, as we still were back then. That was also the year when the other Marauders finally managed their Animagus forms enough that they felt comfortable enough to tell me about them. It came as a great shock to me that they had been able to keep a secret of such proportions hidden from me for three years, especially since Sirius and I had been sharing everything since we had started “dating” right after the summer holidays.

They revealed it to me a week before the full moon, probably knowing that it would take time to convince me to let them risk their lives with an experiment that none of us knew for sure would work. Chances were great that I would have killed them all, because they had gotten into my ‘territory’ during the full moon. But, being the reckless teenagers we were, that thought didn’t cross any of our minds at the time.

I was still about to protest to them coming anywhere near me during full moon, but Sirius looked at me with his big, black puppy eyes (his human puppy eyes, that is), and what could I do? I couldn’t say no to him when he used his eyes on me that way. And so it was that for my January transformation of my fifth year I was no longer alone, which was to be the start of a whole new era of my life.

Anyway, I think the only reason why I didn’t kill them while in my wolf form was that my wolf self was so excited to see Sirius (Sirius later told me this, I had no recollection of it). I just still can’t believe how the others could’ve been so blind to not notice it, when it apparently was so obvious. Despite my first reluctance to let the Marauders near me while transformed, I must admit that they actually helped. My wolf form became distracted, which meant that it didn’t seem to need to cut and bite itself open all night. This resulted in me having far fewer bruises and sores the morning after, for which I was eternally grateful.

The morning after my first transformation with company I was to find myself in less pain that I had ever experienced before, but still not remembering anything particular from the night. The only thing I remembered was that once more I hadn’t attacked anyone, which would usually have shown itself in the fact that I felt like I had some kind of unfinished business, but this time I only felt relief. When I came around enough that I noticed my surroundings, I was shocked to see only Sirius there, holding my hand. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the others had finally found out about us, and that they didn’t want to be there.

Sirius had a hard time convincing me that they still didn’t know and that the reason for their absence was that they had been put in detention for being caught out of bed that night when they returned from the Shrieking Shack. Sirius had only avoided it by staying in his dog form, because he didn’t want me to be alone when I woke up. The others had been unable to pull that stunt, because McGonagall would have been suspicious if she had seen a deer and a rat walking the castle’s corridors. A dog was, after all, much more plausible.

I usually would have preferred to have all my friends around me after a transformation, but that morning I was sort of grateful that I got to spend the time alone with Sirius. It had been getting harder lately to find time when we could be alone without the others suspecting us of being up to something. So we hadn’t even really been able to have a real reunion after the Christmas holidays, when Sirius had been forced to go home so that his family could torture him like they usually did.

Incredibly enough, James and Peter noticed nothing when they came to the hospital wing after they had served their detentions. I think they were too excited about the things that had happened the night before to notice anything. I had a hard time getting all of them to shut up about it when Madam Pomfrey was within hearing range. That night when I got back from the hospital wing, though, I allowed them to fill me in on all the insane things that had happened during the night, which meant that none of us slept before 3 in the morning.

In the time to come I was happier than ever before in my life, perhaps with exception of the time before my bite, but I barely remembered that. I had five great friends, all of whom knew my secret and still accepted me. Three of my friends had gone to the ultimate lengths to make sure that my transformations were as pain-free as possible. Also I had what I guess could be called a boyfriend, even if we had never used that term. You can ask any 16-year-old boy who’s in love for the first time, and they’ll tell you how awkward it can be, but it was even worse for us, as we also had to figure out what it meant that the person we loved was also a boy. Both of us were still unsure of how to proceed, all we had ever done was kiss, but for then that was enough for us.

It should have come to no surprise to me that the first person to guess what was going on between the two of us would be Lily, as she always seemed to know everything about other peoples’ love lives. Apparently she had been spying on us, and saw us coming out of a classroom when we thought we had been alone. She was very understanding, though, more than we had ever hoped anyone would be. She even encouraged us to tell the other Marauders, because as she said, if they could accept a werewolf as their friend, they should be able accept that their best friends were gay. And, as usual, she was right.

We sat down with them one night, in the dormitory, when we were absolutely sure we were alone. We started explaining to James and Peter what had been going on between us for the last 9 months. It was clumsy, awkward and generally not a very fun experience to talk so openly about it, because all we had to look at was two very dumbfounded faces, revealing nothing but shock. It wasn’t till afterwards that we found that all of the shock was not caused by the sheer nature of what we were telling them, but just as much by the fact that we were suddenly so open about it.

Peter was the most shocked, probably because he simply didn’t have the brain capacity to imagine that such things could be happening. James said he’d had a hunch for a while, which, honestly, didn’t surprise me. Sirius and I thought we had been good at hiding our feelings, but apparently this was not quite the case. We had unconsciously revealed enough for James to figure out that our friendship has developed into something more. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he and Sirius has always been so close, like family. And now James, without hesitation, invited me to be part of his family too. I’ve never felt more loved than at that moment.


	8. The First Time

#  **The First Time**

 

That summer Sirius ran away from home. He had been threatening to do it for ages, but I never actually believed he would. Because not only were his parents very stern and very powerful, they were also unbearably wealthy, and would be more than happy, if given a chance, to disown Sirius and pass all of the inheritance on to Regulus. The first two weeks of the holidays he acted very low key, which meant that I heard nothing from him, as he wasn’t allowed to send owls. I had started missing him terribly, when an owl arrived from him saying that he had run away and was staying at James’. I wasted no time in pushing forward the plans I already had for visiting James.

Right at first I got terribly jealous that he had chosen James’ to be his new home. But after thinking about it only a few minutes I realised that there were quite a few reasons why he would go there instead of my place. First of all, he had no idea where I lived. Second, my mother would have been very surprised to have a visitor (we never had visitors), whereas the Potters were known for their hospitality and had already accepted Sirius as their second son. Third, when I had really thought it over, I was relieved that Sirius couldn’t have come to my mother’s house. She would have seen right through us, and we still didn’t want anyone but the Marauders to know. I hadn’t even told Severus yet, things between us had been getting more and more distant since the episode, and now he had fallen out with Lily as well, so we barely talked anymore.

When I got to James’ house the day after Sirius’ owl had arrived, it was to find a great surprise. Sirius and James were out exploring the town, but the Potters greeted me like another long lost son of theirs. The surprise came when they showed me into the guest room, which I had previously shared with Peter while James had had his own room. Now, though, Peter wasn’t here, but instead I saw Sirius’ trunk by the end of the bed. I hadn’t really considered the sleeping arrangements, but I must admit that the prospect of sharing a bed with Sirius was much more appealing than sharing with Peter.

When James and Sirius got back, both Sirius and I had a hard time not having the big reunion we wanted, but we couldn’t because the Potters were standing right next to us – all three of them. We did excuse ourselves rather quickly, though. I wanted to “go unpack” and Sirius offered to help. Luckily James was able to catch our drift and offered to help his mother in the kitchen, something she seemed quite taken aback by, but accepted nonetheless.

Over the weeks we spent together in James’ house we had a lot of first times. It was the first time we were together outside of Hogwarts (Sirius had never been allowed out before), and it was the first time we shared a room (and a bed) just the two of us. This led to another first time, which you can probably imagine, though not the first many nights as we were unsure of how to proceed. And of course we needed to install a silencing charm on the room first.

So while we did spend a lot of time with James – and in the week when he was there – Peter, we also became better and better at making inconspicuous excuses to be alone. James was also good at finding things to do on his own, like writing seriously bad poetry to Lily and sending her owls almost every day. I did my best to discourage him of this, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too far gone for listening at that point, I guess.

The summer passed too quickly. Sirius and I had more time together than ever before, and yet we still had to hide our feelings from the Potters. As far as I know we were successful, they never suspected us to be more than just friends. My mother did complain that I hadn’t been home, which was true, I had only stayed for the full moon and my recovery afterwards, but she seemed to sense that I was having a good time which made it easier for her to accept.

Over the summer, I had almost forgotten how shaky my friendship with Lily and Severus had gotten after the incident during our O.W.L.s, where Severus had called Lily a Mudblood. I was reminded, however, as soon as I stepped onto platform 9¾ on September 1st. Because instead of finding Severus talking to Lily, I saw him with a group of Slytherin boys, who I knew to be trouble. I had actually looked forward to seeing him and talking to him again, but was very discouraged by seeing him in such company.

I wish I could say that I did everything in my power to persuade Severus to stay on the right path and not listen to Voldemort’s calling. However, that would be a lie. In our sixth year, I watched as he gradually became more and more intertwined in his dark regime, and I did nothing. I just tried to stay away from him. My once friend, and mentor in potions, was slowly slipping away from me, and even more from Lily. None of us recognised our friend in the greasy Slytherin, who called Lily a Mudblood in front of half the school.

So, for the first time, I found myself working with the other Marauders in potions. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as working with Lily and Severus, though. Peter, of course, had not made it to the N.E.W.T. level, so it was only James, Sirius and I. And, naturally, I was the only one who actually put work into it, and – I’m sad to admit – I was the only one who needed to. Also, they had a tendency to concentrate more on making the other groups’ potions blow up, than finishing our own in a satisfying way.

Lily was doing worse than me, though. Not that she hadn’t got other friends she could be with – she was quite popular, and especially in Potions where her talent was almost legendary. Her problem was that she had always counted on Severus to be her friend. He had been her only link to the magical world before Hogwarts, and since then their bond had been special, though quiet. Losing Severus in this slow, gruelling way was torture to her. And for the first time, I could think of nothing to say to comfort her.


	9. The Marauders' Map

#  **The Marauders’ Map**

 

It was in my fifth and sixth years of school that the Marauders got to know every corner of the school. Naturally, Sirius and James had discovered quite a few of the hidden pathways in previous years, but nothing compared to the number we found in our day- and night-time wanderings  of the school in our sixth year. Sirius and I discovered a number of them in our constant search for privacy in a castle full of nosy teenagers; James, in turn, discovered them looking for us, being the nosiest of all.

It was after Padfoot and Prongs had been out pranking one night in October and barely avoided capture by Filch – courtesy of the Invisibility Cloak – that they came up with the idea of a map that showed not only Hogwarts, but the people in it. I thought it sounded like a very interesting project, and was excited to see what use it might be put to. Because, unlike the other Marauders, I saw it as more than a means to prank without detection.

How wonderful wouldn’t it be, being able to make absolutely certain that no one was following me to the hospital wing? Or knowing for sure that Sirius and I didn’t get caught together? I was quite determined to keep both of those secrets – at least from everyone but my friends – and such a map would help me do that. Of course, my joy about this invention of theirs faltered almost as quickly as it had come, because how could it ever be possible to make such a map? Especially for four teenage boys. Better make that three, as there was no point expecting that Wormtail would come up with anything helpful.

I was surprised, however, by the determination Sirius and James had. It seemed that neither of them could stand to wait any more for it to be done, and to work. They did most of the work themselves; I only helped a couple of times after finding a reference to something in a book that I thought might be useful. Peter, as expected, did nothing, but he was still credited when the map was finally finished, just before Christmas in our sixth year.

We had all decided that the map should bear some kind of mark, a reference to its makers. We also agreed that, because of Filch, it couldn’t be our names. Therefore, we ended up signing it with our nicknames, which had been invented shortly after the other Marauders became Animagi. Their names had come pretty natural, and almost made themselves. Mine, on the other hand, was a bit harder. I was always terrified that people might hear the Marauders use the name Moony and guess my condition, but luckily no one ever did. After all, only the Marauders ever really used the nicknames, which was why we thought they were safe to use for signing the map.

It only took me about a month to regret ever making the map. James was extremely obnoxious; he was always looking at it, which meant that Sirius and I could never be on our own, because he would always find us and say that he was bored. I think the truth was that he was still uncomfortable about us being alone – he thought we needed chaperones all the time. When James wasn’t looking for Sirius and me, though, he passed the time staring at the dot labelled “Lily Evans”. This drove me crazy too, because Lily was still ignoring James, and because I was often with him, she had started ignoring me as well.

Sirius had his own obsession with the map. Whenever he could pry it away from James, he would sit and stare at the Slytherin Common Room, where I knew he was looking for Regulus. He had confided in me privately that he was worried about his brother. After he had run away, Regulus had ignored him completely, and any good influence Sirius might have had over him before was lost. Now the threat of the Dark Lord rising was making Sirius particularly nervous, as he seemed like just the kind of person Regulus might want to follow.

Despite his young age, Regulus did indeed seem to be hanging out with the other Voldemort supporters – the same crowd that Severus had joined. Their actions were a constant worry for both Sirius and me, and we spent hours talking to each other about it. James didn’t really understand. He sympathised with us in thinking that they’d got the wrong idea, and that they should be avoided at all costs. But he couldn’t understand what we felt about our friend and family being part of it, no matter how hard he tried.

 

* * *

 

 

It was March when James stopped stalking Sirius and me. He “accidentally” walked in on Sirius giving me my “birthday present”, which was a rather intimate one that year. James had a hard time looking at us for a few days afterwards, but after he recovered from the shock of seeing us together like that, he promised to never seek us out when we were alone.

Meanwhile, I was starting accept that Severus and I were probably never going to regain our friendship. We used to be the best of friends, but these days he wouldn’t even greet me, when we passed each other in the hallway. Lily was being treated even worse. He wouldn’t even look at her. It was like she was transparent to him – and they had known each other even before they started Hogwarts, had been each others’ constant support for all those years.

I think it might have been this fact that got Lily warming up to James. It didn’t happen overnight or anything; it took months for her to change from either ignoring him or laughing at his self-humiliation when he tried to get her attention to the point where she would actually listen when he talked, and sometimes even answer nicely. This gradual change had happened between the Christmas holidays and Easter, and when we started school in mid-April, she actually sat next to James in class, causing not only all of the students, but Professor McGonagall as well, to stare at her for a few minutes before realising that the bell had rung for class to start.

When at first I noticed this change in behaviour from Lily, I was afraid what James might do to fuck this up, but luckily he’d grown up somewhat in the last year, so he actually almost acted maturely. At least, as maturely as a 17 year old boy, completely in love, can possibly act around the person he’s in love with. In the last few months of our sixth year they actually had quite a few conversations with each other; something that would never have happened earlier, when all James could do in front of Lily was either drool uncontrollably or humiliate himself in some other way.

They didn’t start dating until that Fall, though, after having spent a few weeks over the summer together at James’ place. That summer I spent nearly all of my time in Sirius’ new flat...


	10. The Order of the Phoenix

#  **The Order of the Phoenix**

 

The first week of our summer holidays between sixth and seventh year, Sirius bought a flat in Diagon Alley. It wasn’t exactly a big place – he had after all been disinherited – but it was very nice anyway. Right above Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, it was nicely placed, right in the middle of everything, and just a walk down the stairs from all the ice cream we could eat. According to Mr Fortescue it was part of the rent.

I wish I could say that we spent the entire holiday relaxing and enjoying each other’s company, but circumstances unfortunately didn’t permit it. The threat of Voldemort was ever growing, and as a consequence, a resistance was forming. Seeing as we were both legally adults and each had our reasons to stand up to Voldemort, we found ourselves in the middle of it.

We weren’t allowed anywhere near any kind of fighting, though. Dumbledore, who was in charge, wouldn’t risk the lives of young wizards, who hadn’t even left school. However, that didn’t mean that we couldn’t help. We were kept busy making leaflets, taking reports from others and doing whatever little we could to make a difference. At the time we felt like it did no good at all, which made us very restless. Sirius in particular had a hard time sitting at home, writing about people risking their lives, when we couldn’t participate. Luckily I was able to distract him from time to time.

Despite our restlessness, the summer went by faster than ever before. I suppose it was the good company that made it seem that way. I only left Sirius’ side on the full moon nights, my mother was still unaware (as were everybody else) of my friends’ Animagi forms, and their help at full moons, so she insisted on having me home those nights, in the secure room I’d used for all my transformations before leaving for Hogwarts.

We both went to the Potters’ for a week, more out of tradition than because we missed each other. We saw James most days, working for the order. The Potters were happy to accept us, as they had the previous years, but that summer more than ever. Over the last year, they had taken to Sirius as a second son, and as a consequence, me as their “son-in-law”. I wasn’t the only in-law they had that summer, either.

Though James and Lily’s relationship had been strained for years, Lily had visited the Potters a week earlier that summer, and it was clear not only by James’ continued rambling about her (which wasn’t really a good indicator anyway, since he’d been rambling for years) but also by letters I’d received from Lily. She actually seemed to have enjoyed her stay at the Potters’, and while she didn’t say as much, she appeared to have warmed up to James rather a lot.

When we went back to school on September 1st, it became clear that the situation in the world outside had reached Hogwarts. What had previously been dislike of each other between Slytherins and the other school houses was now so much more, especially in the older students. It was no longer just a fight over house points and winning the house cup, it was now also a reflection of the fight between Voldemort’s Death Eaters and Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix.

The days when Gryffindors and Slytherins could talk together politely, even be friends, were over. Not that there had ever been many such friendships, but the few that had been, were now completely doomed, like ours. This also meant that a lot of class situations became difficult, as it wasn’t possible to always separate the Slytherins from the other students. The teachers tried to do so anyway, whenever possible.

It was hard to concentrate on studying, when so much was going on outside of Hogwarts. Voldemort’s power had grown so much over the last few years, and by then it was almost every day that the paper reported new disappearances or deaths. We soon found that our restlessness from that summer was nothing compared to the feeling of uselessness that spread among the Marauders from being stuck in school, unable to be of any help to the Order.

The only positive thing that happened in that school year was that James finally grew up enough that Lily accepted to go out with him. I think it helped her a lot to see him being involved in Order work, trying to make a difference. It was actually quite a relief when they finally started dating, even though I had been sceptical at first too. But I too had seen him grow much more mature over the last year or so, and when Lily accepted to date him, they had my blessing.

There was particularly one change in James after he started dating Lily that Sirius and I appreciated. James finally learned for himself the need for privacy that couples have, something we’d tried (and failed) to explain to him earlier. This meant that he actually let us have the dormitory for ourselves sometimes, and he actually started knocking, when he came back! Luckily Wormtail had always been so terrified of finding us together that he had learned this early on, but James needed to try being walked in on, before he realised how uncomfortable it was.

At the time our last year of school seemed to go by so slowly that we were worried sometimes that time had actually stopped, but when I look back at it now, it seems to have flown by, leaving an assorted mess of love, friendship, hate, anxiety, confusion, and other emotions you might find when you’re on the brink of war. In the years to come we would all suffer great personal losses, but none of us could have imagined the way our lives were about to change forever.


	11. The Wedding

#  **The Wedding**

 

Voldemort’s rise to power brought with it so many bad things that, at the time, we found it hard to focus on the good times. But the good times were still there. I for one will never forget the day when James and Lily showed up at Sirius’ flat, announcing that they were getting married. This happened only a few months after we had left Hogwarts, and I had moved permanently in with Sirius – another happy moment.

James naturally asked Sirius to be his Best Man, I had never expected otherwise. What I hadn’t anticipated though, was Lily asking me to be her “Maid” of Honour. She thought it would be fitting, since Sirius and I were a couple, but I had to remind her that almost no one knew about us. In the end, I convinced her to choose her friend Mary instead, but I was still very touched by the gesture. I ended up performing as one of James’ groomsmen, along with Peter.

This meant that I got to be part of the groomsmen, and their first responsibility – and in the case of James the word “stag-party” took on a whole new meaning. Sirius and I hosted it, Peter helped with the decorations. We had decorated the entire apartment with antlers, pictures of stags and does, but even though some of our guest (members of the Order, mostly) thought they were missing, we hadn’t used hunting trophies as we found them too morbid – after all we wouldn’t have felt comfortable partying if James’ head had been on the wall, dead, and staring at us.

Even though we Marauders were the only ones to understand the theme’s full meaning, the other guests found it quite hilarious too, which was of course what we intended – to brighten their spirits in that troubled time. Everyone thought it such a shame that James felt sick and had to lie down for half an hour, coincidentally at the same time as we started playing “pin the tail on the stag” – on a real live stag of course. James was a bit jumpy after he came back from his “nap”, and didn’t sit down for the rest of the party. Other than that, he seemed to have a great time.

 

* * *

 

 

The wedding itself was a splendid affair. The Potters, though old and in poor health by then, knew how to host a party, and seeing as it was their only child getting married, then went all in. To be fair, they probably would have gone all in as well, if Sirius and I had been ready to declare our love to the world, but so far, only the Marauders, Lily, the Potters and my mother knew. Everyone else thought we were just a pair of bachelors sharing an apartment.

The first part of the wedding was very interesting. Seeing as all of Lily’s family were Muggles, and most of the more distant relatives didn’t know Lily was a Witch, we started with, what I guess was a traditional Muggle wedding (having never been to one, I find it hard to say if it was completely ordinary). Lily and her parents arranged most of this, including clothes for all of the guests, as only very few of the Wizards and Witches knew what to wear.

However, the following party (which in the Muggles’ invitation was said to be only for the closest family) was as magical as it could possibly have been. Though a small party of only about 20 people – mostly members of the Order – every detail was perfect. The only Muggles present at that part of the party were Lily’s parents. Her sister and her fiancé had been invited, but they had declined, not wanting anything to do with “that sort of people”.

It was a fabulous winter wedding; the grounds around the Potters’ manor house were covered in snow, icicles hung from the roof all around the house. The party was held outside in a pavilion that had been magically heated so that none of the guests felt cold – but without the snow melting. We all changed into our dress robes, and Lily changed into a marvellous, white, silver and light blue dress, that was an entire ice-landscape in itself. I’ve never seen any dress that stunning.

James had insisted on buying both Sirius and me new dress robes for the occasion, and since none of us really had any money to buy them ourselves, we had accepted without too much resistance. Sirius was of course stunning in a set of deep blue dress robes, but he would have looked stunning no matter what he wore. My dress robes were mostly black, but with trimmings of amber, which Sirius insisted made my eyes stand out nicely.

As the party went on and the firewhisky was found, some of the Order members suddenly forgot all their worries and found their good moods. As I’d never really been able to get really drunk, I got to watch them becoming more and more incoherent and uncoordinated in their movements. Sirius took his responsibility as Best Man seriously, so he took it upon himself to get James as drunk as possible, and he helped him along by becoming equally plastered.

He managed to make James pass out a short time before daybreak. At that point he himself was too drunk to stand up, and was shamelessly hitting on every person in a radius of ten feet of him, including the Potters’ dog, so I decided it was time for us to go home. I excused us to Lily, and somehow got Sirius home and in bed just in time for the sunrise.

Needless to say, we both slept in that day, we didn’t get up until the sun was down again, and we were planning to just stay at home and enjoy each other’s company, while Sirius tended his aching head. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to. We hadn’t been up for more than half an hour before we received word from Dumbledore that we were needed for Order business – there had been a Death Eater attack during the day, more than twenty Muggles and two wizards were either injured or dead. Our moment of happiness was over, and we were brought abruptly back to reality.


	12. Missions for the Order

#  **Missions for the Order**

 

Working for the Order of the Phoenix was nothing like we had imagined. When we were at Hogwarts all we wanted to do was fight, but none of us had quite grasped the severity of the situation back then. All of us (well, not Peter) had finished with O’s in our Defence Against the Dark Arts N.E.W.T.’s, and yet we found ourselves almost helpless in the first missions we performed. Luckily Dumbledore paired us up with more skilled wizards and witches, so we managed to escape relatively unharmed.

Sirius and I generally paired up for missions, while James paired with Lily. Wormtail was usually offered to be the one left at Headquarters, helping with practical things rather than be part of the action – Dumbledore had offered this early on, and Peter had gratefully accepted. He knew full well that he was not that apt at fighting anyway, and his only bravery was seen in the fact that he admitted as much.

James and Lily’s first mission was only about a month after our graduation from Hogwarts. They were paired with a married couple, Frank and Alice Longbottom, both very skilled wizards and trusted members of the Order. They were sent out to deal with a giant, who had been ravaging Muggle villages for almost a week without the ministry stepping in. They returned more than five hours later than planned, all of them bruised and badly shaken, but alive. They reported everything that had happened to Dumbledore, but afterwards they all refused to talk of what exactly had happened. It was, however, rumoured that they had escaped not only a giant but Voldemort himself that night.

I do not like to look back on the missions Sirius and I went on – most of them are too horrific to relive, even if it just through memories and ink, so I will not go into many details. I still think, however, that you have a right to know some of what I went through, so as to better understand what I was thinking and why I acted like I did in the time to come.

Sirius and I were mostly paired with a couple of brothers named Fabian and Gideon Prewett. They were both very accomplished spell-casters, so generally we felt safe in their company, but the Death Eaters were equally skilled, and we, more often than not, escaped due only to luck. Sirius in particular seemed to be a popular target for the Death Eaters, since they were friends of his family and considered him a blood traitor. There were even rumours that some of his cousins had joined ranks with Voldemort.

It didn’t take long from those rumours started popping up until we had proof. Marlene McKinnon and Alastor Moody returned from a mission involving torture of Muggles – the parents of Muggleborn supporters of Dumbledore – with information that Sirius’ cousin Bellatrix, her husband Rodolphus, and her brother-in-law Rabastan had been part of the group of Death Eaters, who barely escaped, when the Order arrived. There were also speculations that the man Bellatrix’ sister had just married might be involved, though we were never able to prove anything.

The missions put a strain on our relationship like nothing before had. The secrecy involved made everyone apprehensive to trust everyone else, and even though Sirius and I had always been open and honest with each other, we couldn’t quite escape the paranoia. These feelings increased exponentially, starting about six months after we became full members of the Order, when time after time we went on missions only to find out that the Death Eaters always seemed to be one step ahead of us, almost as if they knew where we’d be. We started to suspect that there was a traitor in our midst, and everyone became more secretive in an attempt to stop information from reaching Voldemort.

Everyone became wary of trusting other Order members with any delicate information, but within our little circle of the Marauders and Lily we tried to stay open about our missions, because we believed in mutual trust. Of course, in hindsight this was probably a bad move.

The growing paranoia and mistrust wasn’t the only strain on us, though. Sirius’ worst blow came when he was told that his brother Regulus had joined the Death Eaters at age 16, even before he had left Hogwarts. Sirius felt very responsible for this – he was convinced that if he had stayed with his family he might have been able to change Regulus’ mind, to influence him in a positive way and to keep him out of trouble. But there was nothing he could do to change it, and he just had to accept the fact that he now had several close family members who were Death Eaters, and so he always felt that he had it the worst of our group, having to fight his own family. He was, however, proven wrong about that on a horrible day, only months after James’ and Lily’s wedding.

We had gotten so used to there being attacks on Muggles that we barely thought twice when Frank and Alice came back from a mission and told that they unfortunately had come too late to do a difference in the attack on a Muggle couple, and that all they could do was to cover up the cause of their deaths, making it look like an accidental house fire. Shortly after, however, Dumbledore visited Lily and James to give them the sad news that the Muggle couple had been Lily’s parents.

It was a serious blow for Lily – and for all of us. We had all met the Evanses at the wedding a few months earlier and they were such great people, and incredibly acceptant of their daughter being a witch and living most of her life in a world that they had no access to. Losing them was very difficult for Lily, she was only 18 after all, and on top of it all she then had to arrange for their funeral in cooperation with her sister, who hated all things magic.

Lily never told her sister the real cause of their parents’ deaths. Dumbledore warned that she already knew too much about the wizarding world, and that it would be best to stick with the Muggle explanation – a gas leak, I believe. I think Petunia suspected that something was off, though, which may very well have been the final straw for her. All I know is that she stopped returning Lily’s calls and letters shortly after the funeral, which only broke Lily’s heart even more.

The Evanses’ deaths were, tragically, only the first in a series to come. We were at war, and war always claims victims. Before the war ended we had lost the Prewett brothers, Marlene McKinnon along with her entire family, Dorcas Meadows, most of the Bones family, as well as multiple others who had either been killed, driven insane, or had vanished. We all lived in constant fear of being next in line, but none more so than Lily and James at the end of the war.


	13. Depression and Joy

#  **Depression and Joy**

 

A sense of general depression was spreading through the Order after we had lost the Prewett brothers in the most horrific way. For once, Sirius and I hadn’t been with them on a mission – we had been excused because all of the Marauders had gathered to celebrate Sirius’ 20th birthday. The Prewetts had walked into a trap; they didn’t stand a chance against a large group of Death Eaters and Voldemort himself.

Sirius and I obviously blamed ourselves at first for not being there to help them, but as we heard more details about the night we realised that if we had been there we would most likely have been killed as well. It was at that point we became absolutely sure – until then we had only suspected – that we had a mole. It was too much of a coincidence that more than ten Death Eaters and Voldemort himself just happened to be waiting in an abandoned warehouse in a Muggle neighbourhood at the exact moment when the Prewetts went to investigate it.

It was in that time of ultimate despair, when we had almost given up hope that things would ever change, that we got the news that made us believe in a better future again: We were told that both Lily and Alice were expecting babies – due to be born at almost the same time the next summer. They were immediately taken off mission duty; Dumbledore said we had to keep the next generation safe because it was paramount to have new witches and wizards who shared our views.

This obviously meant that the mission pairings changed quite a lot. James and Frank couldn’t go on missions alone, so they were joined by Moody and Sirius. That left me alone for missions, but Dumbledore made the most of that as well. He asked me to go to a group of werewolves who had joined Voldemort. I was to talk to them, gain their trust, learn what Voldemort planned to use them for, and look for signs of how they might be turned to our side.

I must admit I was never very successful – I did join the werewolves, but they never trusted me, and they certainly never warmed to Dumbledore. None of them had had the opportunity I’d gotten, so those who had been bitten early had had no education. Most of them had been abandoned, even shunned, by their families and the rest of the wizarding community, and a lot of them had gone wild, living in packs with other werewolves, rather than trying to fit into a society that didn’t want them.

It took a lot of effort for me to gain their trust, it meant spending a lot of time with them, changing my manner quite extensively, and I found it harder and harder to cope, especially since I wasn’t allowed to tell any of my friends about what I did – a new rule as a precaution against the mole. It was a slow process, though, and before it became too bad, we had an addition to our small group, when Lily and James’ son, Harry, was born.

James named Sirius godfather, knowing that meant that if anything were to happen to them Sirius and I would raise Harry together. I don’t think he ever anticipated a situation where Sirius and I weren’t going to be together, and he certainly never thought that Sirius wouldn’t be able to care for Harry, so he never made any additional plans that named me – not that he would have been able to, because of my condition.

Sirius really took his job as Godfather seriously. He would visit James and Lily as often as possible, playing with Harry, and getting as close to him as he possible could. I would come along as often as my missions allowed me, but I never got quite as close. It warmed my heart to see how much Harry loved his Snuffles, how they would play together for hours, Sirius in his dog shape, the gentlest dog a child could ever play with. Sadly it all changed too soon.

It wasn’t until Harry was almost a year old and Lily and James had already settled into their new life as parents that Dumbledore dropped the bomb on them, and told them about a prophecy that had been made about a child, and which Voldemort had interpreted as meaning Harry. Their little boy had suddenly become the number one target of the most evil wizard of the time. Obviously they wasted no time – they had to go into hiding.

At this point no one in the order trusted each other. I would have liked to say that we Marauders stuck together, but that would be a lie. Peter had been left behind long ago and even Sirius and I were struggling, because of my missions – both the secrecy and my growing depression were taking a toll on us. Only James and Sirius were as close as ever, but they had been with each other on missions for over a year, so obviously they had less secrets between them than anyone else.

Everything about their hiding was kept extremely secret. Lily herself performed the Fidelius charm, and those of us who needed to know their location were told in writing. This way no one but Lily, James, Sirius and Peter knew about the switch – everyone believed that Sirius (the obvious first choice) was the secret keeper.

It hurts me a bit that Sirius didn’t confide in me because he thought I might be the spy. But looking back at that time, I can’t blame him. My mission with the werewolves was driving me crazy, and I was taking my frustrations out on Sirius when I got home. It didn’t help either, that I wasn’t always able to have the Marauders for company on full moon nights. Dumbledore didn’t know that they usually kept me company, so on more than one occasion he sent Sirius and James out on missions those nights, leaving me alone, because having Peter as my only company while transformed would most likely have meant the wolf having a late night snack.

If we hadn’t had Harry to make our lives happier, I’m afraid our relationship would have ended back then. There was so much mistrust between the two of us that we reached a point where the only times, I saw Sirius smile, was when he was with, or talked about, Harry. It really broke my heart, because I remembered that only a year ago, I had been able to make him smile just by looking at him. And because they were in hiding, we weren’t able to visit James and Lily nearly as much as we’d used to, it would look to conspicuous, so even those happy moments were scarce.

If you’d asked me at that time how much I’d give to have the war end and Voldemort vanquished, I’d probably have said I’d give anything, because all of my misery seemed to originate from that. I just never imagined how much I had left to lose.


	14. Halloween

#  **Halloween**

 

If I thought my life couldn’t get any worse than the miserable state of constantly lying to my friends, fearing for my own and my loved ones’ lives, having to be undercover with a group of creatures who disgusted me in everything that they did, and not being able to trust anyone around me, it seemed the universe was doing its best to prove me wrong. It could get a lot worse, and it all did on Halloween 1981.

Had the circumstances been different we probably would have taken Harry trick or treating for Halloween, but everyone knew that would be too dangerous. Lily still made him a costume, though, on James’ orders he was dressed up in a miniature Hogwarts Quidditch uniform and she managed to snap a photo before he got too far away on his toy broomstick and she had to run to catch him.  I only know this because she sent the photo to Sirius and me by owl on that very same night, thinking that it would cheer us up.

As chance would have it, Sirius wasn’t home. He had gone over to Peter to check on him because it had been weeks since we’d last seen him, which was very unusual. He told me he was afraid something had happened to him, that he’d been taken by Voldemort or something like that. At the time I didn’t get why he was so worried, why would anyone want to go for Wormtail after all? Now of course, I understand what a key player he really was in all of this.

I didn’t go with Sirius, I stayed home in case anyone came looking for us for Order business. So everything that went on that night was a puzzle to me for years afterwards, I only learned what really happened when I was reunited with Sirius nearly 13 years later.

I remember going to bed that night, wondering why Sirius hadn’t come home or at least sent me a message saying why he was late. At the time, I figured he might either have been caught up with something or having been worried that any message he sent might be intercepted. Either way I slept very badly, some subconscious part of me knowing that something was wrong.

At midnight exactly, I was proven right. Frank Longbottom came to our flat looking for Sirius. I remember the look of utter hatred in his eyes when he asked to see him; he looked like he would actually have killed him had he gotten the chance. He was so upset it took him a while to realize I had no idea what had happened, but when he had looked the entire apartment over and seen that Sirius wasn’t there, he finally looked at me and then he just broke down.

It was Frank’s account of the night’s events that stuck with me for years. He told me about how Voldemort had found out about James and Lily’s hiding place, how he had gone to their house and killed both of them, and that somehow, wondrously, in trying to kill Harry he had failed, Harry had survived but Voldemort himself had been vanquished. My first reaction was disbelief, how could my two best friends in the world be dead? How was it possible, after they’d gone to such great lengths to stay hidden? And of course the answer to that was quite straightforward. Only one person could have leaked that information, only one person. Their secret keeper. Sirius.

As I reached that conclusion, Frank’s initial reaction suddenly made sense. It hadn’t before, because Frank had always been a good friend and mentor of ours, but of course he wanted to hurt the person responsible for the deaths of Lily and James. I couldn’t believe that Sirius would ever have done such a thing. It was simply inconceivable to me. I knew Sirius better than anyone else did, and in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine him betraying his best friends in such a fashion.

I just wanted to find Sirius so that he could explain it all to me, because I knew that there had to be a good explanation for it all. I told Frank as much, but he didn’t seem quite as sure. I asked him if he would like to help me look for Sirius, but he would rather go home and make sure that Alice and their son Neville were ok.

Unfortunately, I never found Sirius in time. I was still looking when I heard rumours that Peter had found him first. My reaction to his betrayal had been disbelief, but when I heard what he had done to Peter and all those innocent Muggles I started believing that maybe I hadn’t known him that well after all. Maybe he really was just as bad as the rest of his family, and he’d somehow just managed to fool everyone all these years. What other explanation could there be? How could the same person be a loving, caring friend – and lover – one day and a murderer the next? Try as I might, I simply couldn’t wrap my head around it.

It took me longer than I care to admit before I even considered what would happen to Harry. I was so consumed with my own grief and general helplessness that I hadn’t stopped to think about the consequences of what had just happened. By the time I did think about it, Dumbledore had already placed him in care with his Muggle aunt and uncle.

I would have loved to have taken him in myself, knowing that James and Lily would have wanted their son to be raised in the wizarding world and by a friend rather than by a couple of Muggles who detested everything having to do with magic. But I was quite aware that I, on my own, was considered very unfit to be a parent – after all, who would take care of the child every full moon? So I let Dumbledore have his way, and added Harry to the rapidly growing list of people gone from my life.

Over the course of one day, I had lost all of my closest friends – all, it seemed, at the hand of my boyfriend, who was now serving a life sentence in Azkaban, where he had gone directly, without a trial.


	15. Twelve Long Years

#  **Twelve Long Years**

 

In the time that followed, I nearly lost touch with the wizarding world. For one thing, it was painful for me to have to continue living in a place that constantly reminded me of things and people I had lost. Mostly though, it was because of new regulations the ministry passed when it regained power after Voldemort’s downfall. It struck down hard on everything deemed dark and dangerous, werewolves being one of the main areas. It meant that is was completely impossible for me to get work in the wizarding world, and seeing as the Order had been disbanded after the war, I couldn’t even volunteer for them anymore.

So I went out and found myself a job in the Muggle worlds – never working long at the same place, though, my regular absences usually leading to me getting fired quickly. I was barely able to scrape by and pay rent for the lousy, little flat I found outside of London – far away from Diagon Alley and all the memories I wouldn’t let myself remember there.

The longest job I managed to keep was for a Muggle library. My job was to repair the books that had been ripped or otherwise damaged from too much use. After I proved to be trustworthy, they let me take the damaged books home and work on them there – obviously they didn’t know how quickly I could repair them by magic, so it was a fairly easy job. Because I was able to repair so many books so quickly, the managers let me take a few days off every month for “personal reasons”, which meant that I managed to keep the job for over a year, at which time the library sadly had to close down, due to lack of funds. 

It was a very lonely time for me, my move to the Muggle world meaning losing touch with the few Order members still alive. And since I never kept a job for more than a few months at a time, I didn’t even have workplace relationships, always being the odd, quiet, new guy.

In all this loneliness I did my best to move on, forget my old life, because thinking about it was too painful after what had happened. It was difficult though; I often found myself wondering what had happened to Harry, especially every year on his birthday, but that train of thought always let me to thinking about Lily and James – what had happened to them, and who had been responsible – so I tried to avoid thinking about it all together.

Then of course I’d think about Sirius, rotting away in Azkaban, if he even still lived – I had no way to know for sure. I often thought about visiting him, to get an explanation from him, but I always talked myself out of it, because what could he possibly say that would justify his actions? The only thing to be gained from such a visit would be more hurt.

I never let myself love again in that time – after what had happened with Sirius, I figured my love life was somehow doomed. And as much as I wished to forget him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter how bad a person he was, Sirius would always be the love of my life, and as long as he lived, I couldn’t love anyone else.

I never felt quite as alone as around the full moons, though. I’d gotten so used to having company for my transformations that being alone now felt even worse than before. Also now, the wolf was full grown, and even more vicious, which meant that I woke up much more badly hurt than I ever had as a child. And living in the Muggle world the only healer available was myself, and I had never really mastered self-healing, so I my injuries barely had time to heal themselves before the next full moon came around. It was a miserable time.

So the years passed by, very slowly and painfully lonely. I lost count of how many jobs I got and lost during those long years, because they never really meant that much to me anyway. As the years passed, Harry’s name started appearing in the Daily Prophet, which had been my only real connection to the Wizarding world. A story telling that he had returned from his stay in the Muggle world, had started Hogwarts and followed his parents in being sorted into Gryffindor. Another one a year later, stating that he and a friend had flown a car to Hogwarts instead of going on the train, being spotted by several Muggles on the way. That one made me laugh for the first time in a while, because I could just imagine James being so proud of him.

It was weird to think of Lily and James’ son going to Hogwarts, and I wished I could see how he was doing, if he was following in his father’s footsteps in becoming the biggest troublemaker of the school, or if he was more like Lily, quiet and determined to show everyone that you didn’t need to be brought up by wizards to do great in classes. The stories that reached me pointed to the first, but obviously journalism tended to focus on the flashier stories instead of everyday life.

I’d never imagined that I would get a chance to actually see for myself how he was doing, to get to know him, but in the summer of ’93 Dumbledore contacted me, saying that he needed a teacher for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, asking me if I’d be interested.

It took my completely by surprise, I’d never expected to get a job in the Wizarding world again, after the legislation had been toughened. But Dumbledore had somehow convinced the other faculty members that it would be all right, that given the proper precautions, I’d be safe enough to be allowed near the kids.

I was extremely grateful for the opportunity, and I accepted it quickly, partly because I desperately needed the money, but mostly because it would give me an excuse to get to know Harry, the boy, who quite easily, had the circumstances been different, could have been raised by me. But I must say that I expected Dumbledore to have other motives as well, the timing was too perfect not to notice – I received the letter only 2 days after the headline in the Daily Prophet had read “Azkaban Breakout – Sirius Black on the loose”.


	16. Return to Hogwarts

#  **Return to Hogwarts**

 

Usually the professors at Hogwarts apparate or fly to Hogsmeade a day or two before term starts, but seeing as the full moon would be on September 1st that year, I was too tired to do either. Instead I was allowed to go on the train with the students, which I hoped to do inconspicuously. So I arrived early and found an empty compartment at the very end of the train. I covered myself with my cloak, and was asleep long before the train left the platform – it was the night before the full moon, after all.

I woke with a start because something felt wrong, and immediately knew why: There was a dementor on the train. I also realized that I wasn’t alone in the compartment. I’d thought that no one would want to share with a sleeping stranger, but the train must have filled up. It was pitch black outside, and the lights were out, so it was difficult to make out what was happening, but I could hear worried voices all around me. As soon as I gathered my wits, I lit my wand and saw no less than 5 kids crammed into the compartment, one of which had just tried to sit on a cat.

It was in that moment that the compartment doors opened, and a dementor glided in. I immediately felt the air grow cold, and all my fears magnified a hundred times. It was clear that I wasn’t the one worst off, one of the boys fainted and fell to the floor. I acted out of instinct, stepped over him and conjured a patronus – a very feeble one, given that I was having a hard time remembering anything good at the time, but it made the dementor leave non the less.

 As I turned back around to face the kids in the compartment, I realized with a jolt that I knew who at least two of them were. Standing by the door, looking extremely shaken was a boy, who could only be the son of Alice and Frank Longbottom. He had his mother’s round face, and even though it took some imagination at that moment, I was sure he had his father’s smile. And of course, there was no mistaking the unconscious boy: He was the spitting image of James at that age.

It wasn’t the way I had imagined meeting Harry: Passed out on the ground after his first encounter with a dementor. Naturally, it didn’t take much to imagine what horrible moments he would have been reliving a few seconds ago, no wonder he’d collapsed. I let his friends wake him up, but made sure to hand out chocolate to everyone in the compartment, before I hurried up to see the driver and ask why he had allowed a dementor on board the train. It was also a nice excuse to get out of there and sort out the feelings that had suddenly overwhelmed me. 

When told that the dementors would be guarding the gates around Hogwarts to ensure the students’ safety, I knew that Dumbledore and the ministry was worried Sirius would come after Harry. It only worsened the dilemma that I’d been in ever since accepting the position. Could I be a responsible professor at Hogwarts and not tell the headmaster about the secret passages into the school? Not to mention the fact that Sirius was an Animagus. We had sworn as teenagers that no one was ever to know about Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs, but could I keep that promise if it meant putting my students’ life in danger?

I somehow managed to convince myself that it wouldn’t make a difference if I told. The dementors already surrounded the castle, and Dumbledore always knew more of what was going on that he let on – surely he would know the minute Sirius chose to break in. And on that first night, I had other things on my mind. My instructions were to go immediately to the hospital wing when I arrived in the school. There I would get my first dose of Wolfsbane potion, the most wonderful invention, which would allow me to keep my mind and sanity while transformed.

On my way up to the school I managed to break up what looked like the beginning of a fight between Harry and some blonde Slytherin boy, who obviously hadn’t seen me. It took me longer to get up to the hospital wing, than I’d anticipated – I’d forgotten most of the shortcuts I would have known by heart in my own school days. When I finally got there, Madam Pomfrey wasn’t even there, she came in shortly afterwards, telling me that she’d had to tend to those with bad after effects of the dementors. The potion tasted horribly, but I was able to get it down by telling myself how much it would help me during the night.

In the end, I didn’t get down to the feast until halfway through the sorting, but it seemed I wasn’t the only one. I noticed Harry and one of the girls from the train entering right as the sorting hat was being carried out, and I also saw how many heads turned as he did. Clearly people had heard of his fainting on the train, and obviously thought he was weak, scared or childish for it. I made a mental note to explain to him at a later time how dementors pray.

Harry had barely sat down before Dumbledore got up to make his start of term speech. He explained the presence of the dementors around the school, although he was rather vague as to why they were there. Then he introduced me as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. I imagine I must have looked awful that night, right before the full moon, so I wasn’t surprised that the applause was rather quiet. It did hearten me to hear it quite loudly from a spot at the Gryffindor table, where those I had met on the train were seated. It gave me hope that once the students got to know me, they wouldn’t care about my shabby appearance.

Getting through the feast was tough. I was tired and irritable, and would much rather have spent the night alone, but with start of term that wasn’t really an option. I left as soon as it was over, though, and headed up to my new quarters, which would be my home for the next year. When I got there, I found another goblet of Wolfsbane, which I drank immediately. I then set about unpacking my few possessions before heading down to the Shrieking Shack to transform. I figured that since it would be my first transformation with the potion, it would be best not to risk anything in case it didn’t work completely.

It turned out not to be necessary, though, while my body still changed like it always had, I kept my mind and was even able to curl up and sleep for a few hours. It was a wonderful relief, and it made me very hopeful about the year to come. It felt great to be back at Hogwarts.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, work is still in progress, so far I have 14 chapters written, which will be posted about once a week for now, but after that updates might be a bit slow.


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